The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
Tom Wolfe's much-discussed kaleidoscopic non-fiction novel chronicles the tale of novelist Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. In the 1960s, Kesey led a group of psychedelic sympathizers around the country in a painted bus, presiding over LSD-induced "acid tests" all along the way. Long...
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Tom Wolfe's much-discussed kaleidoscopic non-fiction novel chronicles the tale of novelist Ken Kesey and his band of Merry Pranksters. In the 1960s, Kesey led a group of psychedelic sympathizers around the country in a painted bus, presiding over LSD-induced "acid tests" all along the way. Long considered one of the greatest books about the history of the hippies, Wolfe's ability to research like a reporter and simultaneously evoke the hallucinogenic indulgence of the era ensures that this book, written in 1967, will live long in the counter-culture canon of American literature.
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Format: paperback
ISBN:
9780553380644 (0553380648)
Publish date: October 5th 1999
Publisher: Bantam
Pages no: 416
Edition language: English
Category:
Classics,
Non Fiction,
Autobiography,
Memoir,
Biography,
Writing,
History,
Literature,
American,
Literary Fiction,
Journalism,
Culture,
Contemporary
"What we are, we're going to wail with on this whole trip."What Ken Kesey is is a prick, so let's not get any delusions about that. But most great leaders are pricks, and the case Wolfe is making in this masterful biography is that Kesey, in his way, was a great leader. His early days on the Furthur...
He got me inside their heads, which is no mean feat. Fantastic.
At the time I read this I was enchanted with Wolfe as a journalist. In retrospect, his response to the subject matter seems not quite right. He's a debunker who yearns to believe, I think, not the aloof observer he thinks he is.
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